As X loses its CEO, daily usage is down and competition is growing

The social media landscape is undergoing significant shifts, highlighted by the recent departure of Linda Yaccarino as CEO of X, announced on Wednesday, July 9, 2025. This leadership change comes at a critical juncture for the Elon Musk-owned platform, as it faces renewed competitive pressures and a notable decline in daily active users.

According to new data from app intelligence firm Sensor Tower, X’s daily active user base saw an approximate 10% year-over-year decline in the second quarter of 2025. While X still boasts a substantial user base, being 65% larger than Meta’s Threads and ten times the size of its next closest competitor, Bluesky, its long-term dominance in the text-first social networking space is no longer assured.

On mobile devices, Meta’s Threads is rapidly closing the gap. Data released by market intelligence provider Similarweb indicates that in June 2025, Threads’ mobile app for iOS and Android reached 115.1 million daily active users, representing an impressive 127.8% year-over-year growth. In contrast, X recorded 132 million daily active users but experienced a 15.2% year-over-year decline.

Despite Threads’ strong mobile momentum, X maintains several key advantages. Its overall user base remains larger due to a more prominent web presence. Furthermore, X demonstrates higher user engagement and loyalty. Sensor Tower’s data reveals that X users spent an average of 31 minutes per day on the platform in Q2 2025, nearly quadruple Threads’ average of 8 minutes per day. Additionally, almost half (48%) of X’s global monthly app users interacted with the platform daily, compared to 33% for Threads.

Threads, however, cannot be underestimated. Its remarkable 160% year-over-year growth in global app daily active users, as reported by Sensor Tower, is fueled by continuous feature rollouts and its strategic integration with Meta’s other colossal platforms like Facebook and Instagram, which serve as effective user acquisition funnels.

A significant focus for Threads is building its advertising ecosystem, currently its sole monetization avenue. In April 2025, Meta opened Threads ads to global advertisers, followed by tests for video ads in May. Threads benefits from Meta’s extensive, nearly two-decade experience in maximizing ad revenues and its familiar advertising tools for marketers.

Under Linda Yaccarino’s leadership, X’s ad business saw a recovery, albeit a volatile one. Data from Sensor Tower shows that in 2025 year-to-date, advertisers in media and entertainment, shopping, and gaming verticals represented 25%, 22%, and 7% of total U.S. ad spend on X, respectively, indicating growth across these categories since 2022. Top advertisers in the U.S. last year included Samsung, Temu, State Farm, and Microsoft. This year, prominent brands like Apple, Google, Verizon, and Dell have joined the lineup. Ad intelligence provider Guideline also reported a 62% year-over-year increase in U.S. ad spending on X during the first half of 2025.

The advertising market is fiercely competitive, with a long-standing duopoly held by Meta and Google. For Meta, the challenge with Threads was not profitability but achieving consumer traction, a feat that had eluded its many prior attempts at new social apps, including Tuned, Super, Move, Gaming, Hello, Neighborhood, Bulletin, and Lasso, among others. Threads, by leveraging Instagram’s massive user base, finally broke this cycle, using Facebook and Instagram to drive significant growth.

As of Meta’s latest earnings report, Threads has reached 350 million monthly active users. X, now a private company, is not obligated to disclose public metrics, but Elon Musk claimed in a recent post that the platform has 600 million monthly active users. The ongoing battle between these two social media giants promises to be an interesting one, shaped by shifting user habits, strategic monetization, and evolving leadership.